26 March 2006

Irish Eyes Are Winking, You Can Hear the Angels Laugh

DUBLIN, March 23 — At some point in each episode of his reality TV series, Des Bishop is sure to walk onto the stage of a grimy pub in a rough neighborhood, beam out at the crowd and say exactly what it doesn't want to hear.

Des Bishop, an American comedian in Ireland, teaches amateurs how to make jokes by mocking hypocrisy (Photo: Derek Speirs for The New York Times)

In Belfast, he told a bristling Protestant audience that they were more like their hated Roman Catholic neighbors than they liked to admit.

In Southill, an area of Limerick known for boarded-up houses and burned-out cars, he boasted that his show would support the area by attracting tourists whom locals could rob.

Maybe because a camera was present, the crowds refrained from hurling pint glasses at Mr. Bishop, a 30-year-old American. Instead, they laughed. As he kept spouting jokes and insults, they kept on laughing.

It seems that all of Ireland has been watching his stand-up comedy and caustic brand of reality TV. His satire contains no-holds-barred discussions of class divisions, immigration and the drinking problem. He encourages and sometimes forces people to confront their hypocrisies.

Over coffee in a Dublin hotel, Mr. Bishop spoke of himself in an unexpectedly mild voice. "I did always see myself as some sort of an agitator," he said.

Like African-American comedians who joke about racism, he helps take the sting out of prejudices here.

"It's humanizing," Fintan O'Toole, the critic and Irish Times columnist, said of Mr. Bishop's work. "He allows people to emerge from the stereotypes, and to play with those stereotypes themselves."

Mr. Bishop's TV series, which recently had a six-week run on RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster, earned impressive ratings by offering an honest glimpse inside groups that are usually ignored.

The cameras followed him as he lived in tough housing projects, ran stand-up comedy workshops for residents and showcased the results in a performance by his trainees, usually in a shabby pub, with Mr. Bishop as the uncompromising emcee. It is a gritty comedy version of "American Idol."

While living in those areas he took part in some bizarre customs, like hunting rabbits with flashlights and mangy greyhounds (and cooking the catch for dinner); throwing appliances out the windows of abandoned tower-blocks; and amateur boxing (in which he broke a rib).

For some, Mr. Bishop hits a raw nerve rather than the funny bone.

After an episode about Knocknaheeny, in Cork, politicians and news organizations accused him of overemphasizing the area's deprivation, and of exploiting hardship for laughs. One Cork newspaper printed a full-page demand that he apologize; call-in radio shows argued it for two days before banning the subject. (He replied that politicians had previously been happy to ignore that deprivation and that he gave people in the area a voice.)

"I wanted to do stuff that's in some way conscious of an issue," he said. "I did cherish the day when I would be able to stand up and really make some serious points. I didn't see it coming this fast, though."

Mr. Bishop has lived in Ireland since he was 14. He was expelled from school in Flushing, Queens, for unruly behavior and his immigrant father, who had family in Ireland, enrolled him at a boarding school in Wexford. He later attended the state university in Cork, where he gave his first comic performance.

Since those years, the country has experienced a quiet social revolution, stoked by economic growth, cultural openness and newfound national confidence. When he arrived, thousands of young Irish were emigrating each year, and sex scandals had yet to loosen the Catholic Church's grip on public morality.

"I was given the tiniest little taste of the old Ireland," he said.

He speaks in a broad New Yorker's accent but slips easily into the subtle Irish regional brogues. He also knows Ireland astutely enough to tackle its foibles head on.

He describes himself unapologetically as a ghetto voyeur, who grew up admiring his mother for her work in New York's homeless shelters. When he camps in a rough neighborhood, residents take to him, crediting him with living in areas that many people avoid even in daylight.

Mr. Bishop said he forswore alcohol at 19, when he realized he was becoming an alcoholic.

Those experiences, and the volunteer work he does at addiction centers and prisons, strongly influence his frequent live performances.

"Ireland was booming in the late 90's, and that's when I was coming into my own as a comedian who was doing what he wanted to do, rather than just looking for laughs," he said. "Issues of inequality were just out there, and those were the things that started to run in my mind."

That perspective is one reason Mr. Bishop likes to boast about the off-camera successes of his current TV show. For instance, his workshop students in the notorious Ballymun neighborhood in Dublin continued running comedy nights after the cameras left. The best comics became warm-up acts on Mr. Bishop's national tour.

But he dislikes being branded an activist. "Fundamentally, my job is to make people laugh," he said. "I find it a bonus that there are certain elements that have a greater use than just making people laugh. It's just like a little reminder, refreshing people's minds a little bit."

And laugh they do. His current tour included 21 consecutive nights at the 1,000-seat opera house in Cork, a city of barely 150,000. Every performance sold out (and, after his spat with the politicians, almost every night ended with a standing ovation, he said).

At more than six feet tall and with a big impish grin, he enjoys a loyal following among admiring Irishwomen, and others who appreciate his anti-establishment attitude. He cannot walk down a street in Ireland without being stopped by fans who ask him to pose for their cellphone cameras.

"It couldn't get any better," he said. "I'm not sick of it yet."

His popularity is not as keen outside Ireland. Mr. Bishop's DVD's are watched in Irish bars in New York, but he would like to perform there more.

"In people's perceptions, I'm still the outsider, as much as I am an Irishman now in my mind," he said. "Which is fine by me, because I like being the Irish-American. That's what I am, you know?"